An important
strategy that students must learn is comprehension. One way to learn
comprehension is to learn good summarization skills. Summarization
allows the
reader to have deeper knowledge about the material that they read. In
the
following lesson students will practice summarization skills. The
students will
then practice the summarization skills through reading an article and
then
creating a story web and writing a
brief summary of the material read.

Materials:

üBrief
paragraph (written on the board) for students to review silently

Water
is also found in the atmosphere. Gases that surround Earth make up its
atmosphere. One of these gases is the oxygen you breathe.

1. Begin by reviewing silent reading. Last week we
talked about reading silently. Can anyone remember
how to read this way? Good job- when you read silently no one
should be
able to hear you. Let us practice this strategy before we move
on.
I have written a paragraph on the board. I want you to read it,
but
remember we are practicing silent reading. That means none of
your
friends should be able to hear you read.(Water is also found in the
atmosphere.
Gases that surround Earth make up its atmosphere. One of these gases is
the
oxygen you breathe.)

2. Everyone did a wonderful job
reading silently! Today you are going to learn about summarizing
passages. Can anyone tell me something about the word
summarizing?
Good job- it is something we do to show we understand a story.
How could
you summarize an article? Yes- you could write a paragraph about
it and
you could talk about it with your friends. There are several
steps to
becoming successful at summarizing passages:(write
these on the board)

Cross-out information that you
do not need

Cross-out repeated information

Substitute easy terms for a
list of terms

Add a series of events with an
easy action term

Select a topic

Invent a topic sentence if
there is not one

3. Use the steps
I have written on the board to
summarize the written paragraph on the board. Let us look at the
paragraph that we read silently. What is the first step to
summarizing?
That is correct. Erase all information that you do not need. Why
would we
take something out? That is right; because the story or passage
does not
have to have in order for us to understand. Why do we take out
what we do
not need in the paragraph? Mark through portions of paragraph
that
the children say need to be eliminated. The
next step is to delete repeated information. Repeated information is
any
information that has already been given in the paragraph. Why do
we do
this to the paragraph? Now, are there any words that can be used
to
substitute several words? Allow children to give their ideas and
record on
the board. Great! What word can be used
to describe this entire paragraph? Allow children to give
their ideas
and record on the board. What is a
topic? Correct; a topic is what the story is about. Is there a
topic in
the paragraph? That is right; there is a topic. The
paragraph is
about (gases). If you could notfind
a topic about the paragraph, you could use all of the steps to help you
decide
what the topic would be.

4.Now
we are going to make a story web. First, we are going to draw a
circle
and write the topic of our paragraph in the center. We said the
topic was
physics so we will write this down. Now, we will connect all the
words we
used to describe the paragraph. What are some words we could use
to
describe how physics and baseball are related? (Water, atmosphere)

5. Today you are
going to read “The
Physics of Baseball” by Sarah Ives.
While you are reading I want you to remember each step used to
summarize a
passage. If you would like to take notes on the article you may.
When
everyone has finished I will teach you how to summarize the
passage.
Remember to look for main ideas, topics, and delete information that is
not
needed in the passage. Give children enough
time to read the
selection

6. Now I would
like everyone to take out your
paper and pencil. We are going to write a summary about “The
Physics of Baseball.” First, make the
center of the story web. Now, I would like you to write the topic
in the
center. Next, draw five connectors around your center. I
want you
to think of five parts of the article that you thought were
important. Give children
enough time to complete this task.When
you write a summary it will be in
paragraph form. There needs to be four to five sentences within
you
summary. Once everyone has finished, I would like you to discuss
your
summary with one of your neighbors. To write a summary begin with
your
topic. Then, describe the topic within the paragraph. Allow children to experiment with this
activity and observe each child.

7. Assessment: Have
children choose an article from the National
Geographic archives on the website. Then, have each child read
article,
draw a story web, and write a brief summary. Use a rubric to
score
summaries based on completeness, neatness, understanding of the topic,
has a
story web, has a summary, and kept on task during the activity.